How Cloud-Based Communication Can Save Small Businesses Time and Money While Boosting Productivity From enhancing collaboration to reducing hardware costs and more, here's why moving to the cloud can be an SMB game changer.

It's no secret that a cloud migration can provide your small business with a competitive edge. What might be slightly less obvious is how reliable it can be in powering internal communication. So much so, that cloud-based communication can be a great way to save your business time and money while empowering employees to be even more productive.

Here, we speak with communications experts at Vonage to uncover how migrating to cloud-based communication can help streamline operations while keeping productivity and customer engagement at the forefront of your daily mission.

Enhancing collaboration and engagement.

There are thousands of applications to help workforces complete their daily tasks which can leave businesses with the challenge of managing too many different, siloed solutions. With a unified, cloud-based communication system, SMBs can reduce the time spent switching between different apps to facilitate better collaboration between teams when serving customers.

"Cloud-based communications solutions not only boost productivity and efficiency within your teams, but they also enable deeper, more meaningful customer connections and conversations, which ultimately drives profitability," says Leon Frankel, Director of Product Management at Vonage. "We have heard from our own customers that a multi-channel, embedded experience—for example a communications solution that integrates with your other technologies—has increased their NPS scores and positive engagements with their customers."

John Antanaitis, VP of Global Portfolio Marketing at Vonage, adds, "Our unified communications platform simplifies the process for everyone while keeping costs in mind. When an individual, customer, or co-worker is lacking information or support that they need, they can access the contact center, which integrates with popular technologies like Microsoft teams or Salesforce, and access data or an expert within the company to assist the customer without opening another app."

Reduces hardware costs.

When small businesses migrate to a cloud-based solution, they no longer need to worry about the purchase or maintenance of a costly dedicated server or on-premises hardware. Since the cloud provider supplies all the necessary computing power or IT infrastructure, companies that switch to a cloud-based solution only need to pay for the services that they use—which in turn, also provides immediate, cost-effective scaling opportunities.

"A cloud-based communication system frees you from these clunky, on-premise systems and removes the burden of on-site management, compliance, security, and server upgrades as it is offloaded to the cloud vendor," Frankel explains. "This allows SMBs to free up both time and spend to focus on the areas that are most important to them, like customer engagement and scalability."

With Vonage, customers can move away from dedicated telephone systems and video conferencing systems to access voice, video, and messaging right from their PCs or mobile phones. "Cloud-based communications have untethered us, and organizations can capitalize on massive advantages with our video, voice, messaging, and security APIs," Antanaitis says.

Flexibility to promote productivity.

With the increased shift to hybrid work models, companies need to be able to provide their employees with the tools to communicate and succeed on any device from any location. With a cloud-based communication tool, employees can set up virtual meetings, share files, or provide remote support to their customers wherever they have internet access.

Take it from Rick Mills, CFO of Headsets.com, a Vonage customer. Not only does this sort of flexibility help increase productivity by allowing employees to readily work from any location, it also reduces costs in terms of the technology or hardware needed to perform their jobs.

"When we set out looking for a cloud-based solution, we were looking for flexibility for in-office and work-from-home setups that could help us efficiently serve customers while lowering our spend," Mills explains. "We needed to incorporate a hybrid model for our teams, and that flexibility was imperative to us. When we switched from our pre-existing phone service to Vonage, we saved in the neighborhood of 40 percent of our phone system costs, and now our teams can service customers right from home rather than at a dedicated office."

Click here to learn more about Vonage's cloud-based communication solutions that can help drive productivity and cut costs within your own organization.